Soccer Training

If you want an overall body strength exercise, this one will do the trick. The Pullover to Stand is an advanced exercise that will challenge your entire body. It strengthens your trunk, hips, legs, and it can be a great power exercise if you incoporate a jumping movement with it

Lunges remain a fundamental method to increase strength and power, but just doing basic lunges over and over again can limit your progress. Thankfully, you can easily progress this exercise into a more "functional" one by simply lunging into multiple directions.

A ton of emphasis has been placed on core training over the last few years. The idea of stabilizing "the core" to allow the extremities to become more stable and powerful has gained attention in the sports performance and medical field recently and has become a hot topic

Maintaining your position against a defender requires shoulder strength, stability and good body mechanics. This lunge move with rotation trains your upper body to maintain contraction while your trunk rotates. Imagine if you are trying to roll off or around a defender as your arm comes around and pushes into them. If your shoulder is weak you will not be able to roll off with power or fend them off from pushing you around.

In previous articles I’ve written about the importance of rotation with lunges.  Your lunge is a basic move requiring a split stance, knee flexion and hip flexion and extension.  Often we forget about the upper body and the tissue connections with the trunk up through the core and shoulders. A proper lunge allows the back knee to drop to the ground, the front knee stays within 90 degrees of flexion and your trunk maintains postural control. If you lack good tissue mobility through your body, you will have a hard time maintaining an upright position while your trunk crumbles into your hips. This tissue mobility is vital for dynamic explosive movements, better breathing and injury prevention.

Soccer is a game played on the solid ground and in the air. I always sit in amazement of how the body moves when I watch over the field.  A player steps on one foot and maintains postural stability, sometimes against a defender, while leaning at an angle. Then the player manages to trap a ball or flick it in the air while the other leg is unsupported. The ability to stabilize on one foot and carry out a completely separate task with the other unsupported foot is quite skillful. How can you performance train for these situations? And how can you recover from an injury and be able to return to these tasks?

Jumping rope is a quick and easy way to get your heart rate pumping for a general warm-up. You can also use the jump rope to work on your foot coordination, plyometric jumps and change of direction in a rhythmic sequence. Jumping rope requires lower body stability, endurance, strength and confidence from whipping yourself.  If you are returning from an injury, you will want to progress into jumping rope and ensure your have joint stability before trying these advanced moves. It would be best to jump rope in your running shoes vs your soccer cleats to avoid getting your cleat caught in the rope or stuck in the grass. There is no cheating the jump rope because it’s quite obvious when your miss your step!  Use these drills and test yourself for time or number of repetitions.

The proper use of your arms is sometimes neglected in proper running mechanics. And in soccer where speed is crucial, your potential to run faster on the soccer field may be limited if you fail to properly use them.

Using your own bodyweight for resistance training is a great and safe way to improve performance. Utilizing equipment such as the TRX and Jungle Gym are simple and effective ways to train in even the smallest of spaces. The following group of exercises focuses on lower body strength, stability and power to enhance your play on the field. So use your own weight to jump higher and get that header, run faster and prevent possible injury.

Get into the pool for shallow end running and add change of direction movements. I'm using the water resistance to build strength while running forward, backward and side stepping. These drills will show you how to properly change direction, simulate a long sprint with quick change of direction, and break free from a defender. These drills can be done for time, repetition or worked into a larger pool circuit. I prefer waist deep water to avoid feeling too buoyant, which can decrease the sensation of working on strength. If you do these drills in chest or shoulder deep water it will take you longer to change direction and require more steps to get from one end of the pool to the other.